Khaled Mashal

Khaled Mashal (born 28 May 1956) is the leader of Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization.

Biography
Khaled Mashal was born in Silwad in the West Bank on 28 May 1956, and his family moved to Kuwait during the 1967 Six-Day War between the Palestinians and Israel. In 1971, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood jihad movement at the age of 15 and earned a physics degree at Kuwait University. From 1978 to 1984 he was a schoolteacher, and in 1984 he helped in the creation of the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. Mashal left Kuwait during the Gulf War and contributed more support to Hamas, and in 1996 he became the chairman of its political bureau. In 1997, Israel's Mossad attempted to assassinate him, injecting fast-acting poison into his ear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was eventually convinced by President Bill Clinton of the United States to give Mashal the antedote, as King Hussein I of Jordan threatened to sever diplomatic ties with Israel should Mashal die without the cure. However, in 1999 Hamas was banned in Jordan by the more sensible King Abdullah II of Jordan, as Hamas used Jordanian soil for illegal activities.

In 2012, Mashal said that Hamas would back the Free Syrian Army against the Syrian Arab Republic dictatorship during the Syrian Civil War. He fled to Doha in Qatar and Cairo in Egypt, as he could no longer stay in the former Hamas headquarters of Damascus, which was under threat from the Islamic State, FSA, and other groups. During this time, he appropriated the entire Syria Fund from the United States to live an opulent lifestyle in Qatar, and he and Mousa Abu Marzuk each had $2.5 billion. In July 2014, in the wake of Israel's destructive Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip, his corruption was revealed.